It will take a Kennedy to beat Scott Brown

And that is the question lingering behind Gov. Deval Patrick's decision over whom he will appoint to temporarily fill the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. John Kerry.

Defeated by political newcomer Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, last month for a full six-year term, Republican Sen. Scott Brown has indicated that he will be running again as soon as the Kerry seat opens up. This will come upon Kerry's resignation to accept appointment as secretary of state, replacing Hillary Clinton.

Kerry's Senate term runs through 2014. Under current Massachusetts law, Patrick will appoint an interim replacement who will serve until a special election is held between 145 and 160 days of the appointment. The winner will serve until 2014, when election to a full six-year term is held.

Brown, you will recall, won the seat in the 2010 special election after the death of longtime Sen. Ted Kennedy, defeating Attorney General Martha Coakley. Following his loss to Warren, who took the "Kennedy seat" back for the Democrats, Brown looks as though he could now be running for the "Kerry seat."

In his recent farewell speech to the Senate, Brown said, "As I've said many times before, victory and defeat are temporary. Depending on what happens and where we go ... we may obviously meet again."

Brown may have been beaten handily by Warren in the November general election, which drew a large turnout of Democrats and independents, but he is still the ranking Republican in the state, which now includes former Gov.

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Bill Weld, who returned to Massachusetts after years in New York, and Charlie Baker, the unsuccessful GOP candidate for governor in 2010. And Brown, despite his defeat, is still well liked and popular.

Also, he has shown that he is a good and tireless campaigner who, in a short period of time, has relentlessly campaigned throughout the state in two major campaigns. People may want him back in Washington given the fact that with Kerry gone, Warren, with zero legislative experience, will be the state's senior senator.

Democrats, though, are still smarting over the fact that Brown handed them their head when he won an upset victory over the heavily favored Coakley in the 2010 special election, despite the fact that Coakley had the support of President Barack Obama, Gov. Patrick, organized labor and the Democratic Party establishment.

Voter turnout in the special election was obviously much smaller than in the general election, and that worked in Brown's favor. What happened back then could happen again when the special election is held to elect someone to fill out the remainder of Kerry's term.

While Patrick is toying with the possibility of insisting that whoever he appoints as interim not run for the job in the special election, that would be a mistake. Despite his defeat last month, Brown is going to be a strong candidate if he chooses to run again, and the Democrats will need a strong candidate to run against him. That candidate would benefit from serving as a senator for the several months of the interim appointment.

Without a doubt, the strongest candidate would be Vicki Kennedy, wife of the late senator, who many think made a mistake when she declined the opportunity to be appointed upon the death of her husband. Had she accepted, there would have been no Scott Brown, let alone an Elizabeth Warren.

Democrats in Washington would welcome the return of the Kennedy aura to the nation's capital as well as to the U.S. Senate, where Vicki, an accomplished person in her own right, would need no introduction. So would President Obama welcome her. Ted Kennedy, after all, was an early supporter of Obama when Kennedy broke with the Clintons and endorsed Obama during his first run for president against Hillary Clinton in 2008.

Should Patrick appoint Vicki Kennedy as interim, and should she run in the special election, it is practically guaranteed that she would have no primary opposition from any serious Democrat. No one can imagine a Capuano or a Markey or a Lynch, all congressmen, eyeing the seat with her in it and seeking to remain in it.

And while a Republican like Brown could beat most Democrats mentioned as potential candidates for the office, it is doubtful that he would fare very well challenging Sen. Vicki Kennedy. It is one thing to beat Coakley in a special election. It is quite another to go against a Kennedy.

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